One of the great pleasures of owning an old car is compiling its history. Malcolm finally tracks down one last previous owner of the Two Litre Airy Coupé…

When I first bought my Australian-bodied 1937 MG Two Litre (SA1787) in Melbourne in 1975, I started tracing its history through the registration records. I found that a William Airy of Toorak was the first registered owner, so I started by writing to him at the address provided. To my surprise, his son John got in touch with me and filled me in on what he knew about the car. He suggested that next time I was in Melbourne I should call in and see his mother, his father having died in 1961.

In a quirk of timing, Simon sells his MGB just as celebrations for the model’s 50th anniversary get into swing. It all comes down to limited space in the family garage

It may seem a little odd to sell an MGB that you have owned for several years just as the model is set to spend a year very firmly in the limelight, but regular readers will know the reasons why I put my BGT up for sale. Basically I decided to try the pleasures of MGF ownership, and that simply left me with more cars than space in the garage.

Malcolm’s bouncing baby returns from life in the big city and needs nothing more than an adjustment of its ride height to get back on an even keel once more

I’m constantly amazed at how many people remember the ‘floating on fluid’ catch-cry of the ADO16 cars. When I first bought our MG1100 in 1991 there were still lots of Australian-built Morris versions being used on Aussie roads, mostly by our senior citizens, but these days, you never see one. In fact, for a whole new generation of people the car is something completely new, unlike anything they’ve ever seen before! So, while I still meet people who remember the floating on fluid, I meet more people who simply have never seen a car like it and for whom ‘Cool’ or ‘That’s just so cute’ seem to the first words that come to mind.

Simon’s new MGF is brilliant as a long-distance work horse and a stress-relieving toy, but given the choice between working on that or his BGT, it is the older car that is the more comfortable

It is a couple of months now since I introduced my new toy, the 1996 MGF in a striking shade of purple. Since then the summer has inevitably gone downhill, but I have still had the roof down on every possible occasion, more than once racing black clouds home and nipping straight into the garage before the first drops fell.